Aspects of the present disclosure relate generally to wireless communications, and more particularly, to techniques and schemes for dual-mode operations in a wireless communication network (e.g., in a wideband component carrier (CC)) in 5th Generation (5G) new radio (NR)).
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time-division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) systems, orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, single-carrier frequency-division multiple access (SC-FDMA) systems, and time-division synchronous code-division multiple access (TD-SCDMA) systems.
These multiple access technologies have been adopted in various telecommunication standards to provide a common protocol that enables different wireless devices to communicate on a municipal, national, regional, and even global level. An example telecommunication standard is Long Term Evolution (LTE) or LTE-Advanced (LTE-A). Although newer multiple access systems, such as an LTE or LTE-A system, deliver faster data throughput than older technologies, such increased downlink rates have triggered a greater demand for higher-bandwidth content, such as high-resolution graphics and video, for use on or with mobile devices. In response, a fifth generation (5G) wireless communications technology (which can be referred to as new radio (NR)) is envisaged to expand and support diverse usage scenarios and applications with respect to current mobile network generations. In an aspect, 5G communications technology can include: enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) addressing human-centric use cases for access to multimedia content, services and data; ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) with strict requirements, especially in terms of latency and reliability; and massive machine type communications (mMTC) for a very large number of connected devices and typically transmitting a relatively low volume of non-delay-sensitive information. As the demand for mobile broadband access continues to increase, there exists a need for further improvements in NR communications technology and beyond. Preferably, these improvements should be applicable to other multi-access technologies and the telecommunication standards that employ these technologies.
Accordingly, due to the requirements for increased data rates, higher capacity, and lower latency, new approaches may be desirable to improve the system reliability and efficiency. For example, for NR communications technology and beyond, there may be difficulties in supporting different user equipments (UEs) having different UE capabilities. For instance, since the system bandwidth in NR may be up to 1 GHz, there may be challenges in supporting UEs having different bandwidth capabilities. Thus, improvements in wireless communication operations may be desired in order to satisfy consumer demand and improve user experience in wireless communications, e.g., NR communications.